Phil Reisman: How Al Pirro sees himself like Bob Dylan

Sep. 6, 2012

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Al Pirro is a big fan of Robert Allen Zimmerman, the balladeer better known as Bob Dylan.

Who knew? Some things are surprising.

Pirro’s image is wedged into Armani suits, gleaming white teeth and other gaudy accoutrements associated with a smooth lawyer-lobbyist. He’s had the wild roller-coaster marriage with Jeanine, the former Westchester D.A. and TV star. And he weathered the IRS run-in that got him a felony conviction and a stretch in federal prison.

It’s all out there, and Al is the first to admit that along the way his very public life curdled into a nauseous soap opera that he’s trying to live down. You might not figure him as an acolyte of a great artist and poet whose early incarnation as a protest singer produced “Blowin’ In The Wind.”

But no one can be defined by tabloid headlines. No one is one-dimensional. Al sees Dylan as someone who defies categorization. He sees himself that way, too. An enigmatic figure who can’t be pigeonholed.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned from him is that you really have to turn inward and try not to worry about the labels that other people put on you,” Al said the other day. “Somehow, you have to enjoy who you are and not worry about how society is trying to paint you.

“God knows, I’d like to be more known for the things that I’ve done that were great, that I thought were great anyway, real accomplishments. But reality is what people perceive — and I think that’s Dylan.”

Al, who is 65 years old, first got hooked on Dylan’s music when he went to St. Bonaventure University. This was after Dylan went electric.

“I was always a little different in terms of the music everybody else was listening to,” he said. “I remember that my roommate was a huge Johnny Mathis fan. Can you imagine? My first year in school, he’s listening to Johnny Mathis and I’m listening to the Stones and Dylan. It wasn’t long before I was living outside the dorms.”

His favorite song is “Make You Feel My Love,” which was featured on the 1997 “Time Out Of Mind” album. He likes “Idiot Wind,” and “Tangled Up In Blue,” and just about all the other songs on “Blood on the Tracks” (1975), an album that perfectly captures the essence of heartache and loneliness — feelings Al probably knows well.

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Al can bang out Dylan hits on a guitar, which he plays by ear. He’s collected every album, except for “Christmas in the Heart,” Dylan’s eccentric foray into holiday cheer. (I’ve got it. Don’t bother.)

Starting in the late 1960s, Al’s been to about 20 Dylan concerts, including Tuesday night’s performance at the newly renovated Capitol Theatre in Port Chester.

The concert was considered a success. As a matter of fact, on Wednesday, Al went to the trouble of jotting down a two-page review he emailed to me.

He wrote: “There were three winners last night, the Capitol (Theatre) which did a nice job with the early stages of its restoration, the fans, who notwithstanding a mostly spoke rendition of each song, were treated to a nostalgic evening, and lastly, Dylan himself. … It appeared that Dylan enjoyed jamming with his band as much as the fans did.”

If you want to read Al’s full review, go to my blog: http://reisman.lohudblogs.com. If nothing else, it shows just how serious a Dylan fan he really is.

This isn’t exactly a bulletin, but I should also report that Al stayed out of trouble. Everyone behaved. “There were no hassles,” Al told me.

This is mentioned only because Al got into a couple of incidents this year — the first one being a late-night fracas he and some friends supposedly had with other patrons at a Scarsdale restaurant. The New York Post reported that Al punched a waiter, which Al denied.

No charges were filed.

In June, Al was arrested for disorderly conduct and unlawful restraint following an argument he had with a female companion at a Greenwich restaurant. When they caught wind of that incident, the Post editors put his police mugshot in the paper. The case goes to court Tuesday.

Al is aware that any misstep he makes, real or imagined, will wind up in the headlines. He knows there are people out there who regard him with little, if any, sympathy.

So he thinks of Dylan’s song “Positively 4th Street,” perhaps the greatest kiss-off song ever written. Its famous last verse goes: “I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes/ And just for that one moment, I could be you/ Yes, I wish that for just one time, you could stand inside my shoes/ You’d know what a drag it is to see you.”

“I mean, think about it,” Al said. “Wouldn’t you like to say that to somebody?”